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So time for the mega monster update folks. Woah mamma! So much has been going on. The crappy day job has been crazy, and general life has been even crazier but it’s been a tonne of fun so no complaining from this gal!

From the beginning of October all my planning has been going into the most important day of the year…HALLOWEEN. Yup halloween beats birthdays, Christmas…the lot in my books! I am the biggest fan of this spooky day…I have been ever since I was a kid. Although in the UK, Halloween has never been that big a deal, that all seems to be changing now. People seem to be cottoning on to really how fun it is to get spooky and get involved (yaaay! FINALLY!!). The shops may cater for all the kids but the pubs, clubs and houses are all decked out for the grown-ups. Any excuse to get dressed up and drink….yup, we’re in!

Monster Love...(source: unknown)

When you think October – you think monsters right? Well, forget GaGa, we’re the ones who had the Monster Ball truly goin’ on all throughout this month.

First up was World Zombie Day on Oct 8th. Around this date every year, zombie-lovers from all over the world congregate and bring some brain-munching carnage to their city all in aid of homelessness. We were supporting St Mungo’s.

Awwwwwww ain't she a cutie! Little Miss Zombie Becca!

My zombie-in-crime Becca Carberry was an organiser for the London event, so we had been discussing it for months, planning outfits and talking gore make-up tactics til we were, literally, blue in the face. There was no way I was going to be missing this one.

After hearing all about how fun all the previous WZDs were, I knew it was going to be an awesome day. What with dressing up as a zombie, doing a pub-crawl and terrorising snobby London folks….yup sounds like my idea of a perfect day. 😀

After finding a leftover Army costume from my flatmate Dan, that set the tone for my costume. I was going to be a 40s Army girl – a Rosie the Riveter kinda zombie gal with blood-spattered perfect pin-curls.

Image of me c/o: SoulStealer Photography

The day consisted of a meat up (haha!) at Marble Arch, we played the horrific Hokie-Cokie before moving on up Oxford St, through the crowds of shocked shoppers, then to the Great Explorer pub.

Zombie mass exodus to the pub...

Gathering some alcoholic strength we then moved on to The Red Lion on Carnaby St – but as it was so busy we nipped into a pub nearby only to be informed we couldn’t be served because we looked too scary **flattered**!

Zombie ATTACK!!

Be-heading to (Oh dear!) Piccadilly Circus, we then moved on to attack the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, in a way only a zombie hoarde knows how. We then headed to the fabulous Waxy O’Connors, which resulted in more drinking and thus me turning into a messy drunken little zombie. After this my evening gets a little bit blurry, but I remember we then moved on to the Phoenix Artist’s Club where Steven ‘The Zombie’ Uden DJ’ed and played a selection of our favourite walking-dead inspired songs, such as:

On a whole WZD = messy, messy zombie fun. I met some incredible people who will always have a piece of my decaying heart 😉 WZD London organisers rule!! Get involved next year kiddies, I beg you, it’s the MOST fun!

I love this crazy brain munchers! The WZD London organisers

We were thoroughly pumped after our first zombie experience. So when we then were asked to help out at an album launch that required zombie extras the next weekend…we were 110% in! Always in the mood to be one of the undead. It was a tonne of fun thanks to mine and Becca’s mischievious antics.

DefDFires Operation: Zombie Nation Album Launch Party

And our obsession with singing/raving this while we were there, was also pretty hilarious:

But the closer it seemed to get to Halloween and the more we read about the events that were going on all over the city, we knew there was no way we were going to be able to go to just one. We had to attend them ALL god-damnit!

And so began the MONSTER Halloween challenge. To attend 3 parties, with 3 different costumes…in 2 days! Yup, I like to push myself, especially with my fancy dress efforts but we didn’t quite intend on doing so many in such a short amount of time. People I’m not going to lie, it was exhausting, but so so much fun! I really recommend planning something fun like this with your friends – just plan a theme and see how many fun things you can do with it. It doesn’t have to be Halloween, it could be Easter (bunny variations), summer (beach party, garden music festival, Aussie style BBQ)…challenge yourself to a fancy dress challenge! It’s pretty hilarious!

A little thing I like to call the Halloween Hat Trick

I hadn’t intended on going to 3 events at all but Miss Becca continued to flag up some awesome events that were going on in the city. London really does have soooo much good stuff going on at this time of the year. Again, I recommend going on Time Out London and checking all listings for tickets.

Our first stop was at The Last Tuesday Society’s La Danse Macabre Halloween Ball. The Society are renowned for their themed parties…these guys take their fancy dress seriously and so we adore them. They run workshops, throw parties and own an incredible shop full of curiousities. The party was incredible. Beautifully decorated and designed with so much imagination. I really recommend checking out any events they have going on, if you want to try hitting something different.

Becca loved singing to the pheasants...shame they were already dead.

I was particularly impressed with the barn room, which had real pheasants and decapitated bloody teddy-bears hanging from the ceiling. The floor was covered with sawdust, which did seem to get me wheezing, whenever I went in there, but it was brilliant. There was also a table dedicated to making vegetable monsters, which I thought was a really fun idea (feel free to steal that one for your own spooky parties I say!).

In the main theatre hall area you could watch acrobats, spooky bands, and just people-watch and scope out all the other amazing costumes.

Upstairs there was a fun room with dungeon type equipment…que me getting very excited about getting in the birdcage (neeeeeed one of these in my life – I love birdcages, especially enlarged ones that I can sit in). 😉

I decided to be a vampire at this party, as I felt being a zombie all the time was fun but a little repeatitive, so I thought I’d moonlight as a bloodsucker for the eve. I went for the idea of being a vampire theatre-style cigarette girl – complete with tray offering severed fingers 😉

But even after the discovery of the birdcage, we were most impressed with the hot tub room and naturally couldn’t resist a bit of ole- fashioned zombie soup. Mmmmmmmmmm rotten soup for the soul! 🙂

How many zombies can you get in a hot-tub?

The next event was Alice Cooper’s Halloween Night Of Fear at Alexandra Palace where we were, once again, hired for our pro-zombie skills. 🙂 It has been a wish of mine for as long as I can remember to see Alice Cooper live (well pretty much since Wayne’s World reminded us how awesome he really is). Zombie queenie Becca, was once again contacted about participating by Wake Up Productions and thanks to her we all got to play along too (she’s soooo rad!). We were instructed to wear either school uniforms, cheerleader outfits, or everyday zombie gear. I opted for zombie cheerleader as I already had that costume in my dress-up box. We had shifts to go outside into Ally Pally palm lobby to scare the people coming in. We wandered around, tried to grab them as they walked by and did our fair share of snarling at patrons. I was very impressed to see a fair few fans dressed as Wayne and Garth too 😀

Alice was amazing live (just as I expected!), but to be part of his Halloween Night Of Fear team was just incredible. A serious highlight of this year for me.

The next event was TG’s Halloween Ball on the same night at Alice. It started at 11pm and goes on until 6am so you can arrive at any time really. I’ve got to admit by this point I was wiped out, I was dithering in the cold in my cheerleader outfit and ready for PJs and a cuppa but me and Becca – the Halloween warriors – trooped on. We changed from Alice zombies, into Poison Ivy and Sailor Zombie Em. We gulped down cups of tea as we re-applied our facepaints and soon we were ready to hit the murderous dancefloor once again. We danced, we hid from scary folks, people-watched & took photos in the loos! Yeaaaa!

Workin' the TG Toilets 😉

As Becca says: ‘We are heroes in our own backyards’ after that weekend! …So should you require zombies for any of your party requirements – birthdays, anniversaries, bar-mitvah’s contact us by the usual means:

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About gohemians

I'm Emma, I'm 29 and I am a Gohemian.
I am fueled by my passion to travel all over the world and to help others reach their dreamy, sparkly goals (no matter how scary they are).
GohemianTravellers celebrates ambition, personal development and happiness and offers bucket loads of advice to travellers and quarter-life crisis survivors (just like me)!
Life is all about the GoGo! So let's GO!

One Response to Gohemians Eat Brains Too (The Halloween Round-Up)

Awww my fellow hero! SO nostalgic reading this, was it really only a few weeks ago?! It was awesome and epic in every way and I will be smiling about the halloween hat-trick on my deathbed (shortly before turning into a real zombie)! BUT it wouldn’t have been a smidge of the fun if you weren’t my scream queen in crime, LOVE YOU! ❤